Photos by Hermes Pichon
“Our own individual New York” is a set of photos displaying the ‘individual’ within his/her space in the city … or perhaps about the city and the space left for the individual.
I arrived in New York with the goal of creating, something far from the stereotypical pictures conveying the city.
It was the strength of the images that in the first weeks of capturing the city, the style, the patterns and the constraints of this set began to emerge. This city, in its’ entirety, enables creativity. From shot after shot, reframing and re-evaluating, over a period of time, my theme emerged; and I was able to keep exactly what I wanted of New York.
“Our own individual New York” is characterized by a distance from the subject to still display his place in the city, its atmosphere and its lights.
It is a way to put the individual back on the scale of a city so vast, so energizing and so fervent.
In my photos, I wanted to recapture and remeasure the individual, so often disproportionately represented. It is the individual that draws the eye, but New York that holds the image. It is the nature of this relationship that I capture: A New Yorker in his/her city.
The pictures of this set are titled solely the place where the picture was taken. I would almost have liked them to be unnamed, like the people they encapsulate. But that would be a lie. For, if I don’t know the names of the individuals, I do know from where they come. And if the names of the individuals remain unknown, the city, one discovers.
Form street to street, from borough to borough, from Central Park to Staten Island, “Our own individual New York” is simply like this city, it is more than the equilibrium between the city and the people, it is more than the simple addition of the 8,175,133 souls, but principally the entity that unites them all…
Grand central station – Manhattan
Harlem – Manhattan
Lexington Avenue – Manhattan
04 Central Park – Manhattan
East Midtown – Manhattan
Time Square – Manhattan
Red Hook – Brooklyn
7th Avenue – Manathan
Mohegan Avenue- Bronx
Holland Tunnel Hudson River – Manhattan
Coney Island – Brooklyn
East Williamsburg – Brooklyn
Greenpoint – Brooklyn
Sunset Park – Brooklyn
Great Kills Beach – Staten Island
Foxhurst – Bronx
Manatthan Bridge Skate Park – Manhattan
HoffmanPark – Queens
